Jonathan Gurwitz: Michael Steele must go. Now!

New York on the Potomac regularly shares with you the work of some of Hearst Newspapers’ best columnists. Today, we are pleased to share with you this commentary by San Antonio Express-News columnist Jonathan Gurwitz, a leading conservative voice.

It appears Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele will—in the short term—keep his job. He shouldn’t.

The thinking among party insiders is that Steele’s term runs out in January. Better to let him walk out the door after the November general election than try to drag him out and embroil the party in a leadership fight. Nothing, they believe, should detract from the effort to roll back the Obama-Pelosi-Reid imperium in November.

But that is exactly why Steele must go — now.

Speaking at a recent GOP fundraiser, Steele said that Afghanistan was “a war of Obama’s choosing.” He also derided the stupidity of engaging in a land war in a place where “everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed.”

Those are comments you might imagine coming from Azzam al-Amriki, the American-born spokesman for al-Qaida. They are not what you would expect to hear from the titular head of the one American party that has consistently supported the global war against Islamic extremism, the only party upon whom President Obama can rely upon to support his war strategy.

Let’s stipulate that one job of a national party leader is to make partisan points. Still, some things should be beyond partisanship, among them the nation’s security, the well-being of its men and women in uniform and the primacy of victory.

Sadly, too many partisans abandoned that principle during the last administration. Steele’s remarks about Afghanistan are a hollow echo of that partisan zealotry, exemplified by the reflexive hostility to Bush’s war effort by the Democratic National Committee under Howard Dean, the bizarre belief that somehow the world would be a better place with a genocidal dictator and his psychopathic sons lording over Iraq, and MoveOn.org’s scandalous attack on Gen David Petraeus, now the last best hope for Obama’s war effort.

Afghanistan was not a war of Obama’s choosing. It was not, for that matter, a war of Bush’s choosing. It was a war thrust upon the United States by a group of extremists brooding to restore a medieval world of theocratic darkness.

Nor is the United States simply engaged in another Central Asian land war, indistinguishable from the 19th century attempt to incorporate Afghanistan into the British Empire or the brutal 20th century campaign to bring it under the Soviet heel. Afghanistan will never be an American colony. And American soldiers and aid workers are dying, literally, to build schools and hospitals and bring health care and sanitation projects to a long-neglected and long-suffering people—all while trying to minimize civilian casualties.

Steele has lamely tried to re-interpret the meaning of his words, which only highlights his errors. The problem is not only that Steele is so wrong and so out of his depth. It is also that it is none of his business.

The other jobs of a national party leader are to raise money and to manage an organization that can support the party’s candidates, not to make policy statements. Steele’s Afghanistan comments along with previous gaffes and RNC scandals involving lavish spending—including a $1,946 tab at a Los Angeles lesbian bondage-themed nightclub—don’t inspire the confidence of donors or candidates.

As a GOP officeholder or candidate, Steele would be free to publicly oppose the war in Afghanistan, though that would place him in an exceedingly small GOP minority. As a private citizen, Steele would be free to voice his opposition, as many Americans do for completely honorable, non-partisan reasons.

But Steele isn’t any of those. He’s an easily replaceable party bureaucrat, one who has discredited his party by opposing the war on dishonorable, partisan grounds. Republicans can and should do better.